Clive Bush’s Lingerings of the Large Day (Five Seasons Press, 2014)

This beautifully produced book typeset on 16pt Bembo and printed on recycled paper comes with drawings by Allen Fisher, as did Bush’s previous poetry collection Pictures after Poussin (Spanner Press, 2003). Clive Bush has written evocatively of some of the dissenting voices of the late twentieth century in Out Of Dissent (Talus, 1997), a study of the work of Thomas A Clark, Allen Fisher, Bill Griffiths, Barry MacSweeney and Eric Mottram.

Lingerings Of The Large Day consists of a series of long poems, which draws upon the work of seventeenth century poets, scientists and dissenter, when ‘the world turned upside down’, and meditates upon the world then and now. It has a restless probing, a cultural linking as well as a deep veneration of the book and its role in democracy, and comes with a list of resources at the back as well as a sprinkling of quotations at the beginning of several poems.

Ignoring the apparatchik learning
I found their notes above the white noise of history
And dodging the scholars of war
I reached again for the child that wondered
who led me again by the hand my body riddled with life
turning from the waiting for the arrest in the dark
making a line
Fludd, Dee, Herbert, Vaughan to 1647

The presentation and poetic approach recalls the marvellous long poem, South Wales Echo by Gerardus Cambrensis published by Enitharmon Press in 1973, which displayed a deep range of reading and came with copious footnotes. Here though the lingerings of seventeenth century turbulence and brilliance of thinkers, such as John Harrington, William Harvey, John Milton, provide not dissimilar dissenting echoes. There is a similar sense and use of polyphony and rhythm, established by the use of space rather than punctuation. My intention in citing the work of Gerald Casey is more concerned with the theme of both books, that is to say the echoes of books and thinkers long after historical time.

The poems employ a collage effect and move swiftly from one mood to another within the larger arc of the whole:

It is said Thomas James in Bodleian used the Index to order books. Later in 1660, well warmed with strong beer, high priests officially burned his books. In 1683 Oxford also books of dissent. In 1905, translated into Russian, Paradise Lost was popular with soldiers and peasants, although it was not allowed in school libraries.

without trace
to hide in night
begin again

to know nothing
a sure ground
know nothing
night hid

ruit hora
Adamus exulus
there is no art of the possible –
it is black act –

Lingerings Of The Large Day is a wonderful achievement and the Allen Fisher drawings are a joyous gift to the effect of the whole.